The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(19)

“Silly way to fish anyway,” he mutters.

On the other side of the boat, the poth tries and clips one. It floats, stunned, a coin waiting to be plucked from the mud. She slams it again for good measure. It turns belly up and its schoolmates consider it for their own breakfast. She grabs its tail, lifts it up, and cries, “Aha!” Jeryon turns just in time to see a longtom as big as her arm jump out of the water and tear her prize from her hand with its needlelike jaws. She tucks her hand against her belly as the fish vanishes, the school evaporating in its wake.

“We could eat the dragon meat,” Jeryon says, “but it’s probably too salty at this point.”

The thought of eating makes her thirstier, which makes her hungrier. She had some rice and fish at midday yesterday, followed by a handful of figs. She doesn’t recall Jeryon eating at all. “Give me your blade,” she says.

“Why?”

She puts out her palm. “We shouldn’t speak too much,” she says. “Need to save our energy.”

He takes the blade and handle from his pocket, assembles them, and gives her the knife. How long until we turn on each other? he thinks. A person could survive a long time on the sack of meat and water that is the poth.

She undoes a tie in the brocade on her smock. It flops aside to reveal a panel with two bone buttons white as the moons. She cuts them off and hands him one along with the blade. “Put it beneath your tongue,” she says. “It’ll encourage spit.”

He rubs it between his fingers then rubs it with a clean patch of shirt. She rolls her eyes and holds hers up. “To your health,” she says. He returns the toast, and they pop the buttons.

Steak is rarely this wonderfully juicy. They savor and smack. As she pulls her smock closed, he swallows carefully and says, “Save that spare thread.”

She plucks two tufts from where the buttons had been and puts them in his hand. He looks at them and laughs. She laughs too.

“That’ll save us,” she says.

“Two more,” he says, “and we could weave a sail.”

When they stop laughing, they paddle on.

Four hours after sunrise, Jeryon watches his hands shift his paddle to one side. He’s curious as to what they plan to do. There’s a silver flash in the water, and the hands bash it with the paddle. The school has returned. Once he realizes what his hands have done, he nearly leaps overboard to scoop the stunned fish into the boat.

It’s as big as his sandal and twice as thick. It flops a few times on the bottom. Its gills yawn.

Jeryon is beginning to think his father was on to something, although he’s so light-headed the thought keeps slipping away.

“It’s a meagre,” he says.

“Big enough for us,” she says.

“No,” he says, “it’s a type of—never mind.” He cleans and fillets the fish. In the splashes pooled in the boat, threads of blood and stray gore wind around their knees. He combs up the guts with the fish’s skeleton and puts the remains on his paddle. He hands one fillet to her. They take out their buttons, toast, and bite.

The fish’s juices make him gag. His eyes seep and burn. His mouth fills with acid. Swallowing feels like he’s sucking a cork down his throat. He takes a smaller bite. It’s barely more palatable. And he feels thirstier than ever.

The poth slurps the fish, but she’s having the same problem. And her hands are shivering.

His are too. Gripping the paddle disguised it.

He swallows the acid then puts the button in his mouth again. When his tongue is glazed with spit, he trades the button for a tiny bite of fish. He still doesn’t want to swallow, but he can. His hands shiver a little less.

She does the same thing. She smiles encouragingly. Then they eat in unison: button, bite, button, bite. When the fillets are done, he presents her with half the skin draped over the knife. They gnaw the flakes of meat remaining. He gives her the fish head to suck.

Given the circumstances, Everlyn thinks it’s the nicest gift she’s ever received. She licks out the eyes with relish.

They use the guts and tail as chum to attract more fish. With their paddles raised they watch for hours. It seems like weeks. The school is gone again. The chum dissipates.

They return to paddling. After a few strokes, Jeryon pokes at his teeth with this tongue, then stops and picks at them with his finger. A scale is lodged there. He can’t get it out. He puts the blade between his teeth, but Everlyn grabs his hand before he can scrape. She pushes his hand down and holds it, tilts his head with her other hand so that his jaw drops wide, and works the scale free with her shield-stained nails. He lacks the will to resist.

She shows it to him, a translucent gray blade, and flicks it overboard. He nods in appreciation, rubs his teeth with this tongue, and takes up his paddle.

At dusk, he still feels the scale between his teeth. Or is that her nail? He can’t remember the last time he let a woman touch him. No sense in it.

After star-rise he adjusts their course. It gives him something to do and gives her some hope. They don’t mention how thirsty they are. The first rule of thirst: don’t mention thirst. The buttons have long stopped working except as token comfort. Neither has mentioned a need to urinate or defecate, an alarming situation mitigated only slightly by their mutual relief at not having to do so before the other.

They haven’t spoken since the fish, so Jeryon has to scrape the roof of his mouth and bite his tongue to work up the spit to say, “We made good time. Should be in the river tomorrow. Won’t have to row. Just steer. If we get two miles west for every six south, we’ll reach Yness.”